World economic activity continues to grow when seen through the lens of the Sales Managers Indexes, in the world's largest economies (China, the USA and India). After the falling growth rates registered over the 9-months to November, December broke the trend again, with rapid growth in India, renewed growth in the USA and emerging growth in China combining to produce a significant rise in almost all the global indexes.
For most recent decades these three countries have collectively contributed close to 60% of total global growth, and in reality, probably significantly more, as the "rest of the world" in this case includes many countries with less reliable and often inflated data. In any event, if survey results from these three countries collectively are looking good, as is currently the case, prospects for economic activity in the world as a whole are very likely to be positive. And these data provide a good indication that the world has avoided the much-predicted worldwide recession brought on by rising interest rates.
The Sales Managers' Indexes provide the earliest monthly data on the speed and direction of economic activity in key growth areas of the world.
The SMI’s (Sales Managers’ Indexes) are compiled and analysed by World Economics and are based on survey data collected from a panel of companies stratifying all Industry Classification Board (ICB) sectors which are weighted to reflect their contribution to national Gross Domestic Product.
Key advantages of the SMI's:
Global SMI data is published as diffusion indexes to gauge the speed and direction of economic activity.
Monthly data for 8 years is downloadable in a consistent unadjusted format for the 6 key indexes: